Everyone Wins: How Charter Schools Benefit All New York Public School Students
Marcus A. WintersManhattan Institute for Policy ResearchOctober 2009
Marcus A. WintersManhattan Institute for Policy ResearchOctober 2009
Edward Flores, Gary Painter, and Harry PachonTomás Rivera Policy Institute, University of Southern CaliforniaNovember 2009
Based on the reaction of the Maine Department of Education and the Maine Education Association, you’d think recent state legislation that loosens teacher confidentiality laws was going to unleash Enron II.
What’s something that’s happened nearly every year for the last 100? (No, we’re not talking about the dashed hopes of Chicago Cubs’ fans.) School budgets have grown.
They say you campaign in poetry and govern in prose. That just about sums up the difference between the Race to the Top’s “proposed priorities” and the final versions released today.
According to the Superintendent of Denver, Tom Boasberg, "Charter schools are public schools, and they must be public schools in every sense of the word." That's why he wants Denver's charters to accept all students within their geographic boundaries. The idea isn't really new, surprising, or troublesome; most charters must take all students who apply and some even abide by boundary rules.
At least four states have halted, and three others have slowed, their standards-revision processes in anticipation of the Common Core version.
The Department of Education reported the other day that, of the $97.4 billion in economic-stimulus funding that Congress steered its way, 69 percent was “obligated” by September 30th. (The balance--including Secretary Arne Duncan’s much-discussed “Race to the Top” money--must get out the door by September 2010.)
Iowa is also dealing with confidentiality issues--for the accusers of teachers. For the last nine years, the state attorney general’s office has been violating a law that protects investigatory documents by sharing filed complaints (for fraud, sexual misconduct, gross incompetence, and abuse) with teachers, including the identity of the complainant.
Some folks are worried about the efficacy of closing persistently failing schools because of a recent study out of Chicago.
Regarding the RTT's ability to drive change, I wrote this not too long ago (emphasis added):
Quotable: ???It might even be a reason for dismissal. We're teaching kids something that if they were to do it later, they could get in trouble for???If a student in college were to approach a professor to buy a grade, we would be frowning on that.???
We've debated in the past whether it's a good idea for schools to reward s